The Mormon cricket threatens the United States appears to be in danger of a “biblical” cricket storm. Nevada has been overrun by these creepy creatures, with one hospital covered in the insects.
Some parts of the state are now overrun with the bugs, with businesses taking to social media to show how they are fighting the Old Testament plague.
In the northeastern Nevada town of Elko, streets, crops and walls were covered in the tiny creepy insects, with a shocking video showing the extent of their siege.
Staff at a hospital had to resort to blowers and brooms to remove them. Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital Communications Officer Steve Burrows explained, “To get the patients to the hospital we had people out there with leaf blowers, with brooms. At one point we even had a tractor with a snowplow on it, just to push the piles of crickets and move them on their way.”
The scenery looks like it was taken out of the Seven Plagues of the Pharaoh
This particular “Mormon” cricket is native to the US and got its name after it was first discovered in Utah in the 1800s. Its population swells and declines in a multi-year cycle, but many residents of the town of 20,000 are none too happy about their return.
University of Nevada researchers said, according to mirror.co.uk, that the cricket can grow to be more than two inches in length and is often found in grasslands near the Missouri River.
All the poo comes from their diet of grass, shrubs and crops, and their insatiable appetite has an impact on the food chain, affecting the amount of food left over for animals.
When they congregate en masse, their diet can lead to a range of further environmental problems, such as soil erosion and depletion of soil nutrients. If the vicious insects cannot get their nutrients from the vegetation, they will go so far as to eat each other, either dead or alive.
“They look like fat locusts that cannot fly and have long antennae, a shiny body and come in a variety of colors,” the university added. “Mormon crickets can cause significant economic losses to pastures, cropland and home gardens.”
